Archive for the tag “Uinta Brewing”

This oak-aged seasonal offering from Utah-based Uinta pours a fairly clear chestnut brown with a fluffy and persistent light tan head. Oak Jacked smells of pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, and sweet baked breads, with buried wine and tropical notes. The first swallow is velvety and the flavor profile is beautifully spiced, mixing pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, maple, and roasted nuts, with the sweet and bitter taste of pumpkin innards and spiced apples on the periphery. It has the perfect amount of autumn spice to cut through the brown sugar and pumpkin sweetness, with oak and alcohol giving depth to the long and warm finish.

We sampled a lot of amazing beers in 2012, and thanks in large part to this blog, we have met a lot of wonderful new people. When compiling this list of our top beers of 2012, we eschewed any pretense of objective analysis, and simply chose our most mutually memorable first-time beer experiences. Cheers to another year of great beer!

His Notes:

This Imperial Pilsner from Uinta’s Crooked Line series pours a transparent gold with a frothy white head and an alternately sweet and pungent nose of guava and farmhouse funk. Tilted Smile is crisp and biscuit-like on the first swallow, with some restrained citrus, sharp yeast, and tropical notes on the periphery. There is a lot more mesmerizing and mysterious Belgian “good funk” here than American pilsner “bad funk”, adding muscle without sacrificing drinkability. Complex for such a simple brew, Tilted Smile honors the pilsner style by including Saaz hops and real pilsner yeast, yet subverts and expands on it by pushing the flavor profile in the direction of a Belgian pale ale.

His Notes:

Salt Lake City-based Uinta’s Anniversary Barley Wine Ale pours a ruby-brown with a fairly substantial tan head. It offers a surprisingly delicate nose of pine needles, barrel wood, and a little tropical fruit, not quite the expectations for an American barley wine. There are more piney hops here and less of the syrupy sweetness common to this style of beer, with touches of raisins and brown sugar, although the expected fermented wood flavor edges in on the long and warm finish. Anniversary Barley Wine Ale has sweetness and strength, but it’s refined and mellow, sneaking up behind you rather than attacking you head-on. (4 toasts).

His Notes:

Utah-based Uinta’s Labyrinth pours an oozy, inky black with a small but frothy tan head, and the deep nose contains coffee, dark chocolate, wood-fermented yeast, and molasses. The initial flavor is strong, earthy, and oaky, with the creme brulee-style sweetness turning to alcohol bitterness and throat burn. Its’ first sip delivers on the promises of the nose, but it takes you on some labyrinthine twists and turns afterward. The licorice that has been added during the brew comes through mainly in the aftertaste initially, but gets stronger and stronger as the beer slowly warms. Labyrinth goes through a number of changes on the tongue, from sweet molasses to sturdy oak to bitter chocolate and licorice, getting less sweet and more smoky-bitter with each sip.